Primed Cryo Rounds - Corrosive + Cold vs Radiation + Viral

[Drogash]

Hey guys,

Since Baro ki'teer arrived today in his 50th anniversary with the all new PRIMED CRYO ROUNDS mod its sparked a lot of controversy in terms of the D polarity which is annoying a lot of builds limiting variability e.t.c. But another question that came to my head was whether Radiation + Toxin against grineer has been surpassed by Corrosive + Cold now considering the base damage output of Cold has increased.

Radiation is a + 75% damage bonus to Alloy armour while Toxin is a +25% damage to Ferrite armour.

Corrosive is a 75% damage bonus to Ferrite armour while Cold is a +25% damage to Alloy armour.

The other alternative is Viral + Toxin but this ignores alloy armour all together so i wouldn't consider this personally. And of course Radiation + Viral is now a no-brainer but with limited mod slots on my Soma prime i'm looking at only 3 elemental mod combos.

Basically my argument for Corrosive + Cold surpassing Radiation + Toxin is that the +25% alloy armour damage is essentially now +46% due to the increase on cryo rounds damage from +90% to +165% damage. Additionally the Corrosive status proc is more useful than the radiation proc when it comes to straight up damage in my opinion.

I think the 2 options are going to be very close, I haven't gotten primed cryo rounds myself yet and am in the process of farming that ducat. Obviously some play testing can confirm my hypothesis :) Was just wondering what everyone else thinks about this?

Like everyone else, the main thing that annoys me about cryo rounds is that it doesn't fit anywhere in my anti-infested builds since no cold based damage benefits against infested other than Phorid and in terms of corpus it fits nicely for magnetic damage buffs, so my only real question is regarding grineer. :P

 

[Cyborg-Rox]

Just thought I'd point out that Blast Damage has 50% bonus against Fossilized flesh. It might be worth switching from Corrosive to Blast on your Infested build.

[Xzorn]

In terms of scaling Corrosive against armor.... always Corrosive.

Viral is actually better against high level infested.  Eventually having their HP total is more productive than the +75% Corrosive Damage.

I'm actually going to do some math later and see if Magnetic + Toxic is viable now for Crit weapons as previously Pure Toxic has been better.

[Magicfingers]

just want to point out it's not his 50th anniversary...an anniversary happens once a year and this game hasn't been around 50 years. it's his 50th appearance.

[Cepheus-EN-]

Since we're only talking about grineers, with a weapon with a decent proc chance against high-level grineer, my guess would be corrosive. You'd need a guaranteed proc of corrosive if you want to come up to par with Radiation in terms of raw damage. Also, corrosive procs can also help you damage from other sources since it's a debuff.

Radiation would be better if you're just up against mid-level grineers 30-40ish? Since you'd want to kill those darn bombards and napalms quick. Also most grineer bosses use Alloy afaik so Radiation would be better for them.

In general though, corrosive is better since Ancient Infesteds also get a damage boost using it.

[Drogash]

1 hour ago, Cyborg-Rox said:

Just thought I'd point out that Blast Damage has 50% bonus against Fossilized flesh. It might be worth switching from Corrosive to Blast on your Infested build.

Hmm yeah true, didn't even think about blast. I mean it doesn't really work in a 3 element set up since if you use blast you lose out on heat damage for infested fodder. But it is interesting to see whether blast is better than corrosive in a 2 element build against infested. It would also make the blast status proc which is more useful than corrosive proc against infested imo. :)

52 minutes ago, Magicfingers said:

just want to point out it's not his 50th anniversary...an anniversary happens once a year and this game hasn't been around 50 years. it's his 50th appearance.

Lol you know what I mean XD Wish this game was 50 years old ;)

41 minutes ago, Cepheus-EN- said:

Since we're only talking about grineers, with a weapon with a decent proc chance against high-level grineer, my guess would be corrosive. You'd need a guaranteed proc of corrosive if you want to come up to par with Radiation in terms of raw damage. Also, corrosive procs can also help you damage from other sources since it's a debuff.

Radiation would be better if you're just up against mid-level grineers 30-40ish? Since you'd want to kill those darn bombards and napalms quick. Also most grineer bosses use Alloy afaik so Radiation would be better for them.

In general though, corrosive is better since Ancient Infesteds also get a damage boost using it.

I agree that radiation outclasses corrosive against high level grineer in general when taking 2 element mods, but my question is between Radiation + toxin or Corrosive + Cold - Since the new damage buff to cold combined with a corrosive proc may surpass the raw damage of radiation - against alloy armour enemies. Even without the corrosive proc, since cryo rounds is roughly an 80% damage boost to cold in addition to the +25% boost of cold on alloy armour it almost comes to par with radiation even without corrosive.

[Drogash]

Also I just realised I wrote the title of the post wrong - Should be Corrosive + Cold vs Radiation + Toxin (not Radiation + Viral), my bad, although that is also another questions worth pondering about :P

[Xzorn]

You're focusing too much of the damage modifiers and not enough on the status effects involved.

In order to answer the question accurately you'd have to specify a level range.  Like Cepheus said, Radiation is good for mid level and bosses which many ignore status effects but Corrosive status procs are inevitably better.

For instance... Why Viral is inevitably the best Vs. Infested.

Most properly moded crit weapons do about 64% Elemental damage. Lets say for simplicity the weapon does 100 damage per shot and that the 64% elemental damage you're using has +75% modifier against an enemy with 1,000 health. You do 148 damage to that enemy and it will take 7.75 shots to kill that enemy.

Now lets do the same thing against an enemy with 1 million health. You still do 148 damage but your buddy has a weapon with no modifiers (Viral) and a 30% status chance. It will take you 6,756.75 shots to kill that 1 million hp enemy. Meanwhile your buddy's 100 damage with Viral proc will take 5,000 shots, give or take when Viral procs. His Viral is good against all Infested enemies where as yours was only good for that specific health type.

Corrosive Status works in a similar fashion to this but is a bit more complex in that you're both exponentially reducing armor while trying to damage health. I can tell you that at some point Corrosive + Cold will out perform Radiation + Toxic and at a later point Pure Corrosive will outperform Corrosive + Cold.

It heavily depends on the level and weapon being used as well if any damage buffs present.

Edited November 4, 2016 by Xzorn